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Derek thinks Peter doesn’t know the truth about Kate.
But he does.
Before the fire, they’d all smelled a strange girl on him. Someone they didn’t know, didn’t recognize. Derek did too good a job at covering the scent for them to get anything very clear, but they knew there was someone.
They didn’t say anything, didn’t ask. They pretended they didn’t smell it, because it was obvious that Derek thought he was doing a good job at keeping it a secret. They let it slide. Being in a pack usually meant there were no secrets, everything was shared. It’s hard to be isolated in a family with super senses. But living among humans had allowed them to develop a concept of privacy that they tried to respect.
Derek would tell them.
When he was ready.
Derek doesn’t tell them.
Ever.
He doesn’t speak a word but Peter still knows. If he’d been sane while he was alpha he might not have noticed it. But he wasn’t sane and he recognized the scent, pinpointed specific hints of it. Of the smell that had hung around Derek for months before the fire.
Peter knows. But he doesn’t say anything. He’s content to let Derek stew in his own guilt, let him think he’s carrying the burden alone. It’s funner this way.
But he knows.
Peter remembers a warm spring day in a field. They were having a picnic. Martha, Derek’s mother, had brought three giant chocolate cakes for desert and Irene was digging in, icing smeared over her cheek.
His wife always was the messiest eater.
He’d reached a hand out to wipe it away with his thumb, knowing it would put that sparkle in her eye that she got when he did something unexpected. Sweet she would call it. But his hand had been hovering in mid air when he’d been tackled from the side.
It hadn’t been hard enough to knock him over, not really, but he’d known that scent, and that it had been a game. He’d fallen onto his side, pretending to clutch at his ribs.
‘Oh you’ve wounded me!’ He’d said. And giggles had erupted from above him.
God how he’d loved those giggles, cherished them, wanted to pick them out of the air and bottle them.
Lily had been sitting on him, long curly blond hair and big green eyes. After she’d contained her mirth she’d opened her mouth and started spouting off a story. Something about an ogre in the forest.
Peter has been called many things over the years.
Brother, son, husband, uncle, friend.
Enemy, acquaintance, nemesis.
Alpha.
Killer.
He doesn’t like any of them as much as he’d liked being called Daddy though. That one will always be his favorite.
Peter blames Derek.
Some part of him knows he shouldn’t because Derek had just been a kid, just sixteen. He hadn’t known any better, hadn’t been thinking straight. Peter can remember what it was like, being in love. But young love. Love that makes you stupid.
Some part of him aches for the fact that Derek’s first love ended in fire and death and a guilt that can never ever leave.
But that part of Peter has been burned, charred. It’s irreparable. It’s got gaping holes in it that are bleeding all the time and he has nothing to fill it with except memories of heat and pain and blood.
And Lily crying in his arms.
Derek goes to the graveyard sometimes.
Peter knows this because he follows him, just to see what it is he does. He wants to know if Derek mourns because Peter doesn’t know how to.
Derek doesn’t mourn.
Derek stares at the headstones like maybe if he stares hard enough everyone will be here again. His mother, his father, his sister, and his younger brother that Peter is pretty sure none of the others know about.
They don’t know that Derek had a sibling named Anthony who was bad at soccer and ate cotton candy like it was going out of style.
The headstones don’t produce their family. Not even ghosts. They aren’t even permitted that. Instead Derek sits and stares at the headstones and Peter stares at Derek and knows that this life is wrong. He shouldn’t have come back. He shouldn’t have fought so hard to live again because living is Hell.
Sometimes something flickers on Derek’s face. Just a muscle in his cheek but Peter can tell it’s how Derek holds back tears. He smells the salt, even when nothing falls from his eyes.
Peter almost walks over to him then, and sits beside him to stare at the granite and miss everyone.
But then his eyes catch sight of two markers. Irene and Lily.
He leaves Derek to rot in his own misery and self-loathing, and lends some of his own hate to the pot.
Derek deserves this.
Peter hates himself.
It’s something he’s known since he killed Laura. He’s made peace with the fact that he is a monster.
It’s better to be the villain, to know that people hate him, than to play the tragic hero that Derek is trying to.
He sees the way Derek half-reaches for his pack. For Scott. For Stiles. Hell, when Derek is desperate enough he reaches for Peter too.
But Peter isn’t strong enough to reach for anyone. He doesn’t really want to anyways. He can’t contemplate caring again. He can’t fathom building something.
When he tries to imagine it, tries to picture what life would be like if this pack could ever pull itself together and function like it’s supposed to, Peter is hit with the wave of memories. He remembers cotton candy, and barbecues on the forth of july, and a wedding in the backyard with only five other people in attendance. He remembers an ultrasound and a pair of green eyes.
This pack will never be what he remembers pack being like.
Nothing will ever fill this hole, especially not a group of teenagers with more self-esteem issues than he can think about.
He doesn’t see the point.
He sees the way the others look at him.
He sees the way Lydia shies away even though she keeps a straight face. He smells her fear, her distrust. Her hate.
He deserves it, he knows.
But he can smell it on the others too. It hits him like a ton of bricks whenever he walks into a room, how unwanted he is. He doesn’t want them either, but it still twists something in him.
Peter hears them talk about him. And he hears them ask Derek why he’s still around. What is he still doing here? and Don’t you remember that he killed eight people?
All fair questions.
All fair points.
Peter doesn’t really care. He just goes into his room and locks himself away and hopes that Derek never gets over his guilt, never gets to be okay because Peter will never be okay.
They call him killer and murderer. They call him manipulative and sneaky. Not to be trusted. Unloyal. A snake. A psycho.
It’s not like anyone will call him Daddy ever again, and so it doesn’t make a difference what they call him, one way or another.
Peter leaves Beacon Hills the next Spring.
He passes through the field on his way out, where he remembers a picnic and chocolate cake. The grass is tall and the tree he remembers is still there, more gnarled.
The lilies are in bloom.
They don’t get news of Peter’s death until nine months after his body was found.
No I.D. No medical records. They weren’t sure who to contact.
He was cremated. Derek takes the ashes home and puts them in a closet in the basement.
He doesn’t know what to do with them.
Derek spreads the ashes six years later. He sprinkles them off the side of a cliff into a river.
No one comes to watch, but why would they?
Peter never told anyone about how he used to remember the field.